Remembering the Life and Legacy of Irene Cara

Irene debuted a pair of '80s film tracks that would become enduring pop culture staples.

1983 actress/singer Irene Cara poses for a portrait in Los Angeles, California. (Harry Langdon/Getty Images)

On November 25, 2022, Irene Cara passed away. She had starred in the Oscar-winning film Fame and sang in the 1983 smash single Flashdance...What a Feeling. Publicist Judith A. Moore took to Twitter to announce Cara's passing, saying only that she had passed away at her Florida residence and without giving any other details about the manner of her death. She was only 63 years old.

Irene Cara Escalera was born on March 18, 1959, to parents of Puerto Rican heritage in the Bronx of New York City. They had five children in all, with her being the youngest. Her mother, Louise, worked as a cashier, while her father, Gaspar, played the saxophone in a steel factory. She told Ebony that her grandmother in Puerto Rico was a talented musician and that she, her two brothers, and her two sisters all came from musical families.

From a young age, Cara was pushed toward a career in show business. She entered beauty pageants, picked up the piano by ear, and took dance lessons, which helped her land roles on television shows like The Electric Company and later on Broadway in productions like Via Galactica, Maggie Flynn, and Sparkle. The latter work inspired a film that hit theaters in 1976. A musical drama about three African American sisters who join a singing group in the late 1950s, the original Sparkle starred 13-year-old Irene Cara as the title character. Ultimately, the group's youngest member, Sparkle, become famous.

Her reputation proliferated after her breakout role as Coco Hernandez in the film Fame (1980), despite her previous performances on numerous American television series as a dancer and actor in the sequel to Roots. After hearing her voice, the directors decided to alter Coco's character to make it more nuanced than a simple dancer. The success of the film's soundtrack may be directly attributed to her participation in two of the songs: Fame and Out Here on My Own. Fame peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, while the soundtrack reached No. 7 on the Billboard 200 Albums list. Later, at the 1980 Academy Awards, Fame and Out Here on My Own were nominated for Best Original Song, with Fame finally winning.

Cara's stardom helped establish her as a significant player in the music business; she was nominated for and won the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance award at the 1980 Grammys. Anyone Can See was her first album, published in 1982, and the song Flashdance...What a Feeling was released the same year. The song, which Cara co-wrote with Giorgio Moroder and Keith Forsey, first appeared in the film Flashdance and spent six weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Because of this tune, Cara took home awards for Best Original Song at the Oscars and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammys.

Although she still toured (alone and with her band, Hot Caramel) and performed voice acting in cartoons, her two most popular albums were released around the same period. As a result, she was less well-known than in the early 1980s. Conrad Palmisano, a Hollywood stuntman, was her husband from 1986 to 1991. After filing a lawsuit against record executive Al Coury and his company, Network Records, in 1985, the case dragged on into the 1990s, preventing her from focusing on acting and singing. She claimed that Mr. Coury betrayed her trust by hiding the $10 million in royalties she was owed for the Flashdance soundtrack and her first two solo albums, Anyone Can See (1982) and What a Feelin' (1983). According to a 2001 issue of People magazine, a California jury awarded her $1.5 million in 1993.

Cara, a native New Yorker, started her Broadway career with minor roles in short-lived productions. However, her performance in the musical The Me, Nobody Knows lasted for more than 300 performances. As Mary Magdalene, she traveled in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar in the mid-1990s, and her songs were used in the 2012-2014 national tour of Flashdance.

We mourn the loss of Irene Cara.